Susan Elaine Jones
- Feb 23, 2018
- 2 min read

I ate body!

Last week I mentioned the great auk in Norwich Museum in their Natural History gallery.

This week I was reminded of a exercise in writing museum labels run by SHARE, which introduced me to the Norwich School of Taxiderm, and the story of Fred Ashton, who didn't let anything go to waste. As the Independent review of the exhibition noted:

"Ashton, too, was a character: he famously ate the flesh of the birds he taxidermied, and pencilled on the bits of wood that he used as bases: “I ate body!” This is one of the many mad details, offered by the gallery text, which elevates the exhibition from being a rather dull collection of natural history specimens to a vivid social history. It plays on our sense of the macabre while encouraging us to empathise with the historic plight of birds."

It's a great story. And he's not the only person in history that enjoyed eating everything possible. Early encounters with new animals showed sketches of animals captured for science (and many of those that became extinct). For some reason, they often look like they are running for their lives! Especially the rail family (as I've noted in a previous blog post), but that's what you get for being flightless and tasting:

"more than ordinary dainety meat, relishing like a roasting pigge."

Charles Darwin also tried eating everything he discovered. As so wonderfully illustrated here.

The NPR have a lovely article tracing other scientists who eat their subjects - including a leech expert, recipes for house sparrow drumsticks, a 30,000 year old bison and a paper on a tasting panel of eight types of tadpole.

So, just to say, I'm adding some notes to my "don't accept dinner invitations from these people" list.